Artisan Pizza Night

My “Rustica” Pizza

One of our favorite pizza places in town is Brixx Pizza. It’s a regional chain that features brick oven artisan pizzas that are quite tasty. Laura usually gets the “Mexican”, which has chicken and jalapenos. I usually get the “Rustica” which has prosciutto, artichokes, mushrooms, and garlic cloves.

The only problem is that Brixx Pizza is located in the Shops at Gridlock on Woodruff Road, a place one does not drive if one wishes to keep one’s sanity. So, we decided to see if we could replicate our favorite pizzas at home.

We had planned to do this last weekend, but Laura had a very bad migraine. We only got part of the ingredients for our pizzas, so this afternoon I headed out to complete the list. Turns out I was over-zealous, and got far more than we needed. Laura invited her co-worker, Casper, to join the festivities.

Appetizer – Flatbread with Smoked Salmon and Capers

I knew this would be a lengthy process, so I thought we needed a pizza-themed appetizer. I found a package of flatbread at Publix. I toasted the bread, spread cream cheese on it, sprinkled it with capers, then added smoked salmon and chopped dill.

We cut it into six pieces, and it turned out quite well.

As for the pizzas, we started with a blob of dough I got at Publix. One blob (I had bought two of these) was enough for each of us to make our own small pizza. We started kneading the dough into our own artisanal shapes (ie, we couldn’t get it to shape correctly.)

We pre-baked the crusts for about 10 minutes before adding the toppings.

Speaking of toppings, we had quite the variety. I had taken a knot of garlic and roasted it for about 40 minutes with olive oil. I planned to use whole cloves on my pizza.

Our small oven only had room for two pizzas, so Casper and Laura got dibs. Here are their creations:

Casper’s Chicken Pizza

Casper started with a pizza sauce base, using a pre-made Boboli sauce. To this she added fresh tomato slices, chicken, cheese, garlic, and oregano.

Before cooking –

After cooking –

Laura’s “Mexican” Pizza

Instead of pizza sauce, Laura started with a base of black bean paste. To that she added chicken, cheese, tomatoes, and jalapeno slices.

Before cooking –

After cooking –

Laura also added dollops of sour cream after cooking to tone down the heat from the peppers a bit.

Tom’s “Rustica” Pizza

Of course, I would be the one to get totally carried away. I coated my crust with a touch of olive oil, then spread a very thing coat of the Boboli sauce. The next layer was the cheese, then tomatoes.

I distributed whole garlic cloves, rough artichoke pieces, mushrooms, and kalamata olives over the pizza. I almost forgot the prosciutto – the pizza looked complete without it. Since that was probably the most expensive ingredient we had, I did add it at the last minute. I topped it with some rough sea salt and ground pepper.

Before cooking –

After cooking –

Did we accomplish what we wanted? Did we replicate Brixx Pizza’s recipes? I think Laura came closer to replicating it than I did. Mine was much more…dense. While the crust was light and thin, I got carried away with the ingredients. I’ll consider mine an ideal version of the Brixx recipe

Artisan pizza night was a success. I didn’t try Laura or Casper’s pizzas, but my certainly was tasty. I think I went a bit too heavy on the salt, but I can fix that next time. Everyone polished off their pizzas, so I’m assuming they liked theirs, too. I think we will be doing more of these.